


inkhound; lifeline

by CorvidFeathers



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Tattoo Parlor, Friendship, Gen, Gerry Lives AU with extra bells and whistles, Gertrude Robinson (mentioned), Implied/Referenced Abuse, The Desolation, The Eye, metaphysical body horror
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-09
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-14 20:53:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29302227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CorvidFeathers/pseuds/CorvidFeathers
Summary: Gerry would like nothing better than to burn the last vestiges of his mother's business to the ground.Unfortunately, he's bound to the building.  So he does the next best thing.(or, Gerry runs a tattoo parlor, hunts Lietners, gets entangled with the Season 1 Archives crew, makes friends, and does his best to ruin the entities' days)
Relationships: Gerard Keay & Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Gerard Keay & Sasha James, Gerard Keay & The Archives Crew
Comments: 33
Kudos: 102





	1. beneath the crumbling arches

**Author's Note:**

> Big thank you to @agarthanguide who came up with initial impetus of this AU and then dreamed up the details with me :D
> 
> We just wanted an AU where Gerry can meet the whole S1 crew and finally have some friends. And also to explore the question of how _would_ one help people marked by the entities?
> 
> The specifics of Gerry's situation will unravel more as the fic goes on.
> 
> I've moved around a few things around timeline-wise for this fic, mostly regarding Gerry's conflict with the Cult of the Lightless Flame. It doesn't explicitly come up in this first chapter, but it will come into play in future ones.
> 
> Content warning for implied/referenced abuse (discussion of Mary Keay's parenting) and fire/fires in crowded buildings.

The Desolation smells like gasoline and burning leather and ash.

 _Will burn, is burning, has burned_ ; all of the states wrapped up into one acrid, nauseating scent that clings to the back of Gerry’s throat and makes his head swim. 

The bouncers at the door had patted him down, confiscated a sharpie from his pockets and waved him through without so much as a second glance. 

He slips through the foyer, slipping through clusters of people in band t-shirts and dark makeup, passing around water bottles.

The club used to be some sort of theater; a scrappy affair squatting in the carcass of decrepit, cramped opulence. 

The floor is packed, shoulder to shoulder. Whatever the fire codes entail, this can’t be within them. Live-wire excitement circulates through the crowd, the tinny sound of pre-recorded metal from the blown-out speakers almost disappearing under the swell of voices.

It might have been nostalgic, if he couldn’t smell the danger creeping through the crowd, the promise of frayed electrical cords and overheating lighting arrays, the promise of the sudden flare of heat, of they had so much to live for, of cut tragically short, of obituaries that used phrases like so much promise.

Gerry slips through the crowd, following the familiar pull of the _will-burn-is-burning-burned_.

It smells like standing before an open flame, like watching the pages of skin curl and burn away, the head rush of scorching away all that clung and clawed at him, in his head, winding around his bones, singing through his blood. 

But the fire hadn’t given him the out. Nor had it saved him, in the end. Just changed the terms of his imprisonment.

 _Burn more_ , it promised, with the insistence of a burn throbbing. _More, and all this will burn away._

The fizz of amp feedback echoes from the speakers, sending a jolt of pain through Gerry’s head.

The club lurches around him, the floor moving sharply under his feet. It’s the press of the crowd that keeps him on his feet, until the dizziness recedes.

“Hey!” Someone touches Gerry’s shoulder, and he starts, slipping from the contact as quickly as he can in the crowd.

A girl with fading maroon buns and smudged black lipstick is peering up into his face. The crowd moves, and her shoulder is suddenly pressed against his. “You alright?” she asks. 

Her eyes reflect the cracked chandelier overhead, little fractals of yellow and orange, and the gasoline and smoke is choking.

But it’s not twisted around her, so Gerry nods, giving her a thumbs up, and pressing onward.

The familiar ache throbs behind his eyes, an ever-present reminder. Quickly, quickly. 

But he’s spent years playing chicken with the pain that took up residence in his body. He knows just how far he can push it.

He makes it up to the edge of the stage. He jostles and pushes when he has to, but there are advantages to height. Here, the smell of gasoline and smoke is choking. 

Almost there. He cranes his neck, and catches sight of a sliver of backstage, a handful of figures gathered in the wings.

The first is a woman with a guitar, her face hidden behind a tumble of dark hair. She laughs at something her companion is saying, and lets her guitar rest on its strap for a moment to pull a pack of cigarettes from her spiked jacket.

The figure beside her leans closer, and lifts a square of white plastic. A flame sparks to life, illuminating familiar features.

The white lighter sparks in Jude Perry’s hands as she lights the guitarist’s cigarette.

The woman breathes in, and the cherry of the cigarette burns crimson between her fingers. A promise.

A local act that had suddenly struck big; a crumbling old theater; a bright-eyed woman onstage, counting her audience and her opportunities.

As if she can feel something, Jude’s eyes flicker up and lock with Gerry’s.

Shit.

She makes no movement. A slow smile spreads over her face, and she tilts her head as if to say: _And what are you going to do?_

The sticky heat of all those bodies in a confined space crushes down on Gerry. How quickly could he reach the exit? How quickly could the situation turn? 

There are shoulders, hands, bodies pressed against him, too close, too many, crushing in on him, and they will burn, are burning, have burned. 

A familiar, sick helplessness creeps up his spine, up his throat, the cold, familiar kind that wants him to freeze in place, to make himself small so the monster’s gaze won’t fall on him, keep himself out of the way, tread the razor’s edge of his mother’s expectations.

But the secondary instincts, the real survival instincts, kick in a moment later. 

It was Jude Perry. The pleasure of the Desolation was all in the moment; they couldn’t plan shit.

* * *

The side door swings open under his hand; and he glances around, looking for something to prop it open.

“Hey!” a voice shouts. A bouncer, striding along the hallway. “You can’t be back here.”

“Oh,” Gerry says, letting the door fall closed again and stepping away. His eyes snap to the red badge of the fire alarm, just over the bouncer’s shoulder. “Sorry.” The bouncer steps closer, but he’s moving slowly, cautiously, as if he’s trying to gauge Gerry’s state before making sudden moves.

Gerry waits until he’s another step away from the opposite wall, ducks under his arm, and yanks down the lever of the fire alarm. 

* * *

The puddles in the parking lot gleam with the rainbow-sheen of gasoline, little rainbow fractals shimmering in the wan light of the half-wrecked streetlights. Gerry studies them idly, leaning against a dumpster and pulling out a cigarette. 

He doesn’t have to wait long.

The muffled shriek of the still-ringing fire alarm follows Jude out the back exit. She peels away from the group as soon as she spots him.

“Keay,” Jude says. Her hair is damp, and the shoulders of her jacket are soaked from the sprinkler system. “That wasn’t very polite.”

“Jude,” he says. “Got a light?” He waves the cigarette at her. 

Anger ripples across her face, her flesh beginning to boil as she steps toward him. For a moment, it looks as if she’ll skip conversation and slam him back against the dumpster, but then something pulls her up sharp, and her composure is back.

Interesting.

“ _Gerard_ ,” she says, drawing out his name. Her voice drips with mock-friendliness. “Still playing with fire?”

He holds out the cigarette for a moment longer, but she just smiles. “Was it the singer, or the club you were trying for?” Gerry asks.

“All of it, of course.” Her eyes narrow, but she smirks. “It’s not a matter of trying. They’re marked already. Your little stunt only prolongs the fun.” She takes a breath. “But it was fun, to see them struggle and run, realize just how easily it could all be taken away. All those people, pressed in so close… so much to lose.” She tips her head to the side. “Could you feel it?” 

Before he can answer, she’s laughing. “Of course you could. You know it, don’t pretend you don’t. I can tell.” She smiles. “The ecstasy of burning. Past, future? All of that is nothing but fuel to stoke your flame higher. But you can’t imagine the freedom of having burned.”

The meager heat of a single tongue of flame, eating through the cover of another book. All that knowledge, the power within, going up in a moment. Power beyond ink and skin and to see, to hear, to know.

“You want to _know_ it, don’t you?” Jude’s eyes are alight, fixed on him, twin embers glowing with a breath all of their own. “It’s not too late.”

“Sorry. I’ve met your cult.” Gerry forces himself to speak, to list his head to meet her burning gaze. “Not really my crowd.”

The moment breaks, and all the hunger and interest in Jude’s face flickers away, to be replaced with boredom.

“Right, whatever,” she scoffs. “That’s not what’s supposed to get you Eye freaks off, and all. Some people are boring. So what do you want? Or did you just come here to pick a fight?”

The world tilts around him, the colors of the puddles and the lights of the parking lot blurring into a smear of black and prismic brilliance. _Pushing it._ He was pushing it. 

“What if I said I just wanted to ruin your night?” Gerry says. 

“You know what just occurred to me, kid?” Jude says. “She’s dead. There’s nothing protecting you anymore.” 

She steps closer, and he can feel the heat rolling off of her, like standing before an open flame. Steam curls off her shoulders, her hair, the water from the sprinklers hissing away as she leans in.

Her smile sharpens, and then begins to drip down her face, revealing the rows of teeth beneath. “I always wanted to do it when that old bitch was still alive. Would have been fun to make her watch.”

Just another monster.

Gerry draws the lighter from his pocket, and clicks the flame on. 

His hands don’t shake. Years of practice.

There are many things in the world scarier than Jude Perry.

“Not as much fun as you might think,” he says, lighting his cigarette. “Gertrude hated a scene.” He considers. “Well. Unless she got to burn things down.”

Something ugly flashes across Jude’s face, not the boiling rage she had greeted him with earlier. “Gertrude never understood,” she hissed. “She couldn’t.”

Weird.

She’s close enough he can feel the heat of her breath, radiating from whatever furnace-force burned within her. But she doesn’t touch him. Not yet. 

For all the Desolation’s destruction, there was always that element of restraint, as well. The precision of a readied blow, a hammer waiting to fall, the car-and-mouse game as they studied how to make it hurt most. 

They never destroyed everything. If everything was gone, what was left to hurt? 

“Seems like she understood enough. You know, she taught me a thing or two,” Gerry says. “About wax, and fire, and what happened to your friend Eugene.”

Jude recoils as if she’s been stung. The fire in her eyes dims to an ember-flicker, the waxy heat of her skin dissipating and hardening into a grimace.

“You won’t. You couldn’t,” she says. “Gertrude’s gone, and it was Arthur’s fault she even lasted that long. We should have burned her years ago. We should have-“ She catches herself. “But things are different now. Her little tricks won’t work anymore." Just like that, her smile is back. "And we’ve learned a trick or two of yours.”

There it was. “Right,” Gerry says, taking a drag of his cigarette. “Another messiah? How’d that work out for you last time?”

Jude’s hand is suddenly against his chest, and she shoves him back against the metal of the dumpster. His head cracks back against it and the cigarette tumbles from his fingers.

The smell of burning fabric overwhelms all else as her fingers sizzle through his t-shirt and meet the flesh beneath.

He gets his leg up between them and kicks her back with all his might. The blow takes her off guard; she stumbles backwards, but regains her balance quickly.

Gerry pushes himself up, and almost falls flat on his face. Pain runs liquid through his bones, centered behind his eyes but reverberating everywhere.

He catches himself on the dumpster, blinking until Jude’s form stops coming apart in his vision.

He doesn’t miss the surprise on Jude’s face, quickly replaced by giddy disbelief. 

Jude draws back with a scoff. “You’re weak.” She sounds almost giddy with disbelief. “And you’re here, fighting me for scraps instead of feeding your patron?” She laughs, full-throated, genuine laughter that rings over the sound of the fire alarm. “You are like her, Keay. But she would have never bothered with trivialities like this.” She waves a hand at the club. “I guess this is all you can handle.”

She brushes off her shoulders and turns on her heel, leaving without another word.

Gerry leans back against the dumpster, breathing carefully, trying to make the world settle under his feet. Pain was one thing, but he needed to be able to get back to the Tube station. 

_You_ are _like her._

He pushes himself upright again with a hiss of pain, shaking away the impulses that scitter through his mind with the lingering pull of the Desolation. 

Burn away his mum, and Gertrude just took her place.

He supposed he should be grateful Jude was too hung up on her to worry about what she had spilled to him. Less than he had hoped, but something, at least. The Cult of the Lightless Flame has plans.

That was worth the dwindling hours of his strength, even if he had to make it back to the shop.

The cigarette is smoldering in a puddle, little wisps of smoke rising as the gasoline begins to catch. Gerry grinds his heel down on it, drowning the flame.

* * *

Jude is gone by the time he gathers himself, but the singer is still hanging outside the exit with her band, chatting with a handful of fans.

Gerry grits his teeth. He needs to start the walk back to the Station, or he won’t manage to get there, never mind the walk to the shop after.

But he can still smell the Desolation clinging to her. 

The burn on his chest throbs in time with the ache in his head, and nausea curls at the back of his throat, blunt and painful.

He can’t.

_Later. I’ll come back later._

The smell of burning follows him all the way to the Tube station.

* * *

As soon as his feet hit the threshold, he feels better.

Not good, but better.

Some days, the shop feels like a tether, always there, pulling at the edges of his consciousness. Tonight, returning feels like coming up from drowning, and finally being able to fucking breathe. 

He slides to the shop floor, and puts his head between his knees until his body forgets it’s dying and the world stops its sickening spin. 

Slowly, the boundaries of the shop settle over him, dulling the wild firing of his nerves, until he is something greater than his skin, and the haphazard collection of organs and bones and hurt huddled on the floor. 

He forces himself to take a breath, feeling the cathedral of his ribs expand and contract under his hand. All the load-bearing joints creak and protest under the pressure. The building shifts around him. 

Settling. It was settling.

In moments like these, it felt as if the building was him, and the rest was just the appendage that could reach out to the world. 

“Nope. Still in here.” He taps the side of his skull, and focuses on how the gentle beats reverberate through the bones of his jaw.

The moment passes.

He straightens and leans back against the wall, looking across the room. 

As soon as it was clear he was stuck here, properly stuck here, no more jaunts across the continent, no more anti-apocalypse roadtrips, he’d gotten to work ripping out every trace of what it was before. Clearing away the sagging bookshelves, calling his mum’s old associates to sell them off until he couldn’t anymore and torched the rest in an empty lot by the park. Knocking down a few walls. It had been messy, ugly, amateur, the sort of thing his mother wouldn’t have been able to stand.

She had her _dignity_ , her _values_ , ideals that apparently weren’t besmirched by hacked-together rituals or corpse-carving, but were at odds with things like Gerry’s eyeliner and any effort she considered amateurish. 

But the building was his now, and if it was going to be a part of him, it was going to be treated like the rest of him: decorated any way he damn well pleased.

Sometimes it felt like the walls remembered, somewhere in the lines of plaster and drywall, the scratched wooden floors and lovingly-repainted walls. 

Maybe the blood had just soaked that deep.

Or maybe it was he who couldn’t forget.

He forces himself to his feet, and across the room, to the spiral staircase to the loft. 

He pauses, and looks to the far wall, adorned with faces and fragments. He steps over to light the burned-out candles, runs his eyes over the frames. Dozens of eyes stare back.

The oldest names, the oldest faces, are still the most familiar; the cavalcade of voices he would hear from his mother’s workshop, her collected dead.

 _You_ are _just like her._

His hands spasm, and the flame of the lighter brushes his knuckles. The pain, brief but white-hot, cuts through his senses more sharply than Jude’s touch.

The burns on his chest throb, a multi-pronged accompaniment.

It isn’t an apology, he always tells himself, or some sort of fucked-up penance. It’s a promise. A due to the dead, to everyone forgotten and lost and devoured and used up.

He leans on the railing of the staircase to kick off his boots, and then climbs to the top. The whisper of his feet on the metal joins the quiet creak of the building.

Burn cream and bandages from the first aid kit, and then the real work begins.

 _Cult of the Lightless Flame_ , he begins, on a notecard. _Jude Perry_.   
  
The words come out a scrawl- his hands are still clumsy, slow to obey his commands- but he needs to get the details down before he forgets. 

When the rough report is done, he picks a pin from the jar - orange- and jabs it into place over the neighborhood with the club.

When he stands back, he can see a constellation of orange pins, emerging from the sea of unrelated incidents scattered across London.

* * *

The design pinned up on Gerry’s board is loops of red and black ink, simple bands of red thread meant to wrap around a wrist. The lines are straight, geometric, neither interlocking nor tangling.

The simplest kind of tattoo; a mundane one, the power in its association.

 _A thread, so I can always find my way out._ That was what Jaya had asked for. Appointments with her always turned to strategy sessions; her and Gerry sitting at the old cafe table he had salvaged for the shop, plotting out just how best she could slip the thing chasing her. 

She took the whole thing in such clear-headed stride that sometimes Gerry half-considered what she would make of the knot of other problems stowed away in his loft, the tangle of the missing and the gone.

But tangles are what got her into this mess in the first place, so he keeps it simple.

He fumbles for the worn off-brand mp3 player that lives underneath the counter. His fingers catch on the spiderweb of cracks over its surface.

It’s like a maze, Jaya had said the first time she stumbled in, her clothing wild, her eyes reflecting back impossible geometries. 

It’s never where I expect it, but suddenly, I’m at its heart.

He hits shuffle on a random album, letting the beat of the bass and the wailing guitars carry him through the pre-appointment routine and steal some of his awareness of the passing time. 

By the time he’s set up his tray, checked the inks, and printed the reference appliqué, the wan light of morning is beginning to shift to midday. She’s not late yet, but the dread of the possibility crawls closer every moment. 

He’s up the loft, studying the map and not studying the collection of gilt-framed shrines that clutter the opposite wall when the bell on the door chimes.

“Hello?” a voice fills the room. Not quite familiar. Not quite a stranger. 

* * *

Jaya wraps her hands around her mug, breathing in the steam and peering at the liability form Gerry set before her. She’s already added her signature, looping and elegant. 

Little warped fragments of the shop dance over the surface of her jhumkas as she turns her head. “After this is done,” she says, precisely, cautiously. “Will I be able to come back?”

“My door’s always open,” Gerry says. “Make enough racket, I’ll probably come down.”

“But you can’t…” she bites down on the words, and her lip. “If it doesn’t work, there’s nothing- you can’t do anything.”

Gerry weighs that. “There are other possibilities,” he says. “But they’re not the easy kind.”

“This isn’t easy,” she says.

“Maybe not. But the others are harder. They carry more expectations, and higher prices.”

She raises an eyebrow. “Higher than your fees?”

He smirks. “I do sliding scales. They don’t.” 

“Point taken.” She stares down at her cup. “I’m never be… safe from it.”

There’s nothing he can say to that. 

“Alright,” she sets the mug down, and slides her paperwork across the table. “I’m ready.”

Gerry picks it up. “And the placement?”

“I’ve thought it over, and I’m sticking with it,” she says, with a nod. “I want it to be… immediate.” 

Gerry smiles. “On hand.”

That gets a little laugh. “Right. On hand.” She takes a breath. “It’s about strategizing, right? If I’ll be able to notice anything, it will be this.” 

Gerry nods, and lets the silence lapse between them, beckoning her over to the tattoo chair, where he’s already laid out his tray. He watches her examine the packets of fresh needles and the reds and blacks needed for her thread from a distance.

The tattoo pen comes to life in his fingers, and he takes her hand in his and leans over to start the linework. “You ready?”

She nods, and looks away. 

Jaya lets out a breath as the needle cuts her skin. She doesn’t look over, but some of the tension leaves her shoulders.

When it’s done, she sits examining the new lines of red and black curled around her fingers, and smiles. 

* * *

  
His next appointment doesn’t show. He checks the name scrawled in his files, and then the clock, and doesn’t look it up. There’s only so much he can do.

Right now, that’s firmly confined within the walls of the shop.

But a pallid young man stumbles in, halfway through when the appointment should have been, with a wild look and a story of shadows and impossible faces, so Gerry sets aside his worry and gets to work.

* * *

Gerry sees the man off, a card with his next appointment clutched like a lifeline in his hand. He watches him step down the street from the doorway for a moment longer, the usual mix of trepidation and frustration sparking like a lifewire in his chest. 

He itches to get out, to do something more. There are plenty of leads waiting to be chased, but the sharp edges of the ache behind his eyes nipped that impulse.

Stay put. 

Some days he still feels like a fox with its leg in a trap, and it took all his will not to start chewing.

“Excuse me?”

Gerry blinks, and looks up.

A dark-skinned woman with glasses is standing on the sidewalk, looking between the placard and him with mild confusion. 

“Are you... Gerard Keay?”

He winces. Never a question he wanted to answer. 

“In the flesh,” he says. 

“I’m Sasha James,” she says. “I’m with the Magnus Institute.”

“The Magnus Institute,” he says, flat. 

It wasn’t surprising, exactly. Eventually, some road would lead them back to him, even if it hadn’t been included in one of Gertrude’s postmortem provisions. Occupational hazard.

Sasha James. Has he heard the name before?

Gertrude hadn’t liked him hanging around the Archives during business hours, regardless of how deserted they were- _it wouldn’t do for you to draw attention, Gerard_ \- but there had been unavoidable circumstances. 

He shakes off the feeling of Gertrude’s eyes, and tries to tune into what she’s asking. “Sorry?”

She frowns. “Could I ask you a few questions? We’ve been trying to get in touch with you through the phone, but-“

“Yeah, the place doesn’t have a landline anymore,” Gerry says, and focuses on her again.

It’s not obvious- not like the way it is with many people, there’s nothing quite raw and ripped-open about her- but there’s something clinging to her. The barest hint of rot, and over that, something disorientating, like institutional air freshener bent wrong. “Appointments are walk-in only.”

“Oh… kay,” Sasha says, giving him a look. He smiles back.

“Or by email,” he says, stepping back and holding the door open for her. “Want to come in?”

She hesitates for half a second, curiosity warring with caution. Then she nods.

“Thanks,” she says, stepping past him and into the shop. She takes in the mismatched furniture, the cabinets plastered with flash sheets and stickers, the wall of posters.

She stops in front of one of the paintings, one of Gerry’s old works. Her lips start to mouth the words. Grant us the sight that we may not know.

“Tea?” he asks, waving a hand at the cafe table. She blinks, and looks up. 

“Uh- no, thank you,” she says, tearing her eyes from the painting. 

Her eyes sweep over the interior, but as she sits down, he can feel them settle on him. When he looks up, she’s looking unabashedly. 

“What can I do for you, Ms. James?” he says. 

“We’ve met before,” she says. “I didn’t realize until just now. You look different than the… pictures.” The last word comes out in a flustered rush. 

They both knew what kind of pictures she would have seen. “We have?”

“You’re not exactly easy to forget.” She taps her knuckles. “I was in the Archives, fetching a record to check something for Artifact Storage. I had to go to Gertrude because the file wasn’t where it was supposed to be, and you were there in her office.” Her eyes narrow. “I assumed you must be there to give a statement, but it was weird you were so familiar with Gertrude.” 

The memory is vaguely there- a bespectacled researcher in a crisply-pressed shirt and cardigan, trying to get some sort of file out of Gertrude. Gertrude’s eyes followed her when she left, lost in thought. She hadn’t confided any of those thoughts to Gerry, of course, for all he had pried. “Right.”

Her gaze sharpens. “You knew her, didn’t you?” 

“Gertrude and I were…” Friends? Definitely not. Colleagues? “She had use for me, now and then.” Still found a way to have use for him, maybe, depending on just how Sasha had ended up on his doorstep. He wouldn’t put it beyond her. 

He can almost feel Gertrude peering over her shoulder, her bony figures digging into his shoulders. A fragment of a fear steals over him, half-remembered instinct from when his mum could just appear. 

“You don’t sound happy about that,” Sasha says.

“Being useful isn’t always the most comfortable of relationships,” he says. 

The kettle clicks off, and Gerry stands to make tea. He can feel Sasha’s eyes on his back as he reaches up to cupboards. 

“You know, I tried to find this place a few months ago, as part of a follow-up,” she says. “And it wasn’t here.”

“It’s kinda hard to find,” he says. 

“No. I mean it wasn’t here.” Her tone brooks no argument. 

When he turns to look at her, the insistence is drawn in the line of her shoulders. 

He tips his head. “Okay, you couldn’t find it _yet_ ,” he says. “Because you hadn’t had a run in with anything yet. But now you have, am I right?”

She shifts, uneasy. “Yeah. Something. Somethings.” Her gaze wanders around the shop, from the vaulted ceiling to the collection of posters on the far wall. “What is this place? What do you do?”

“Tattoo shop,” Gerry says, and she gives him a look. “I have my council license, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

She taps her pen against the pad of paper, pensive. 

“Are they still after you?” 

“What?” 

“The _somethings_ that marked you,” he says. The sprawling mess of the Institute and Gertrude’s shade aside, he knows how to help people. 

Well, he knows how to _try_.


	2. you see i know your fate

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ hey my au collaborator and artist friend @agarthanguide made these incredible illustrations of Gerry and his shop for this fic!](https://agarthanguide.tumblr.com/post/643865164458950656/au-where-gerry-is-alive-and-runs-an-occult-tattoo) Please go take a look at them! There are so many little details in the shop and Gerry just looks perfect and I’m going to be looking them for so long.
> 
> Also I managed to accidentally delight my original note here trying to update it with the illustrations so the gist of it was: thank you everyone left comments and/or kudos on this fic so far! I’m so elated and grateful for the feedback and support! Also, thank you to @agarthanguide who has the most thought-provoking, razor-sharp character analysis and reads my fic snippets and rough drafts <3 she really brought this AU to life!
> 
> I rewrote every conversation in this chapter at LEAST once there is so much unused dialogue in my outtakes file.
> 
> Content warnings for this chapter: panic attacks, references to past abuse, slight mentions of body horror

The spoon clinks against Gerry’s mug as he stirs sugar into his tea. 

When he turns back to the table, mug in hand, Sasha hasn’t looked away. She studies him as he sits back down, watching him raise the cup to his lips and drink. He gives her a little grin.

“You know, I expected to be the one asking questions,” she says. “It’s kind of my job.”

“Sorry. Force of habit.” Another sugar, and a bit of milk. It was good to have things to do; it gave the people who came in some space, made them feel more comfortable, usually. “I help people like you, people who are being hunted or drawn in.” 

“How?”

He smirks. “The _power of positive thinking_. Trial and error, mostly. A little invoking of other entities, now and then.”

“ _Entities_?”

Gerry blinks. “Gertrude really didn’t leave her affairs in order, did she?” 

They hadn’t exactly been close, the past year or so, since he’d been more or less confined to the shop. 

Occasionally, she walked statement givers to his door; he always wondered what it was like, the Tube ride from Chelsea with Gertrude. Did she give them her harmless old woman act? Pay for their fare? 

But it was hard to imagine her plans changing to such an extent that she left her successor nothing.

Maybe this was some sort of test. A hazing worthy of the Eye. 

Or...

“Are you the Archivist?” he asks. 

Some emotion- anger, hurt- flashes over her face before she shakes her head. “No. What… does that have to do anything?”

_...or Sasha isn't high enough in the pecking order to merit telling the truth._

Gerry takes a breath, the Corruption and the Spiral swirling around his senses. She’d been marked by two entities already, and didn’t even know what she had been dragged into. The new archivist must be busy.

A dull ache starts up behind one of his eyes, along with an itch of inevitability crawling through his joints, along the lines of ink in his skin.

Cycles. Legacy. 

If Gertrude has somehow planned this...

“Archivists have a different deal,” he says. “Quitting’s not an option for them. But you might want to think about it, because your boss is going to put you in further danger.”

“What?”

“The Archives has more than its fair share of workplace accidents.” Burned through them, sometimes literally, from what little he had managed to glean from her. His father had been the rare exception and wasn’t that a piece of irony that made him cringe. “The further you are from the Archives and their business, the safer you are.”

“I… can’t. It’s not me they’re after,” she says, after a breath. “Well. It’s not just me, anyway.”

“Who else?” 

“My- coworkers. My boss.”

“Got it.”

“And… Even if I could quit- I couldn’t,” she says. “I need to know.”

Gerry worries at his teeth with his lip. You really, really don’t want to, are the words that rest on his tongue. But she’s not some crying kid, not someone who stumbled in the door and wants nothing more than for the nightmare to be over. 

And him telling her she _shouldn’t_ want that is unlikely to do anything but frustrate.

“You know what’s going on,” she says. “You knew what Gertrude was doing. What this is all about. Would you be willing to come to the Institute? Make a statement?” she says.

“No.” The word comes out more vehemently than he meant it too, but he doesn’t modify it. “I’ll help you, and your coworkers, but I’m not keen on adding to the Archives’ possessions.”

Some of the statement-givers Gertrude had sent to his door mentioned nightmares of a spindly woman with owlish eyes and a distorted face. _Flesh split by eyes struggling to open_ , had been one particularly vivid descriptor. No wonder Gertrude never seemed to sleep.

She gives him a long look, and then glances at her phone. “I need to get back to work,” she says. “And… think things over. Am I going to be able to find this place again, if I look for it?”

“You probably won't ever have a problem finding it again,” Gerry says.

She pulls a face at that, and gathers her things, slipping her notepad and pen into her purse. 

“What did you mean?” she turns and asks, just as her feet hit the threshold. “About the Archivists being different?”

“I see why Gertrude liked you,” Gerry says. There’s the same razor-edge of wit, the same keen intensity; friendlier, more tempered than Gertrude, but present. “But that’s a question for your Archivist.”

* * *

_One of your tricks_ , Jude had said.

Unless she had taken up an interest in tattooing, there was only one trick Gerry was associated with. And it was his mum’s, really.

Will he ever stop feeling like a patchwork of other people’s teachings?

(He does wonder how Jude got her ink to set in wax, and how it survives while the rest of her melts and shifts. Some integral part of her, bound up in whatever grain of self-image fueled those who lived like her. Years ago, he wouldn’t have spared it a thought. But he’s no longer quite as he was, no longer entirely flesh-and-bone either.)

He destroyed as much as he could of Pinhole Books, but kept a handful of things; his mum’s records, and the ancient behemoth of a desktop computer that Mary Keay had used to begrudgingly digitize her business. He kept the records and the computer away from the shop, in the little studio above the shop; the thing wasn’t any sort of artifact, but it still felt like it bled disdain.

Every time he heard the screech of its start-up and put his hands on the sticky plastic keys, for a breath he’s ten again, senses attuned to every creak and shift of the house. The knowledge of exactly how many seconds it would take to shut the machine down and be back in his bed is still ingrained in some corner of his soul. 

But his mum’s been gone for years, dead for longer, and no one is going to appear at Gerry’s shoulder. 

There’s no concrete record of Leitner connected to the Desolation, nothing that had ever fallen into his mum’s hands, but there are scraps. A handful of books Mary made unsuccessful bids on, or leads that led nowhere. 

She marked each entry with annotations, speculations. 

Gerry’s eyes skim over a scholar of Mesopotamian history and an equal possibility of affinity with the Corruption, but I find it unlikely the two could co-exist.

\- demonstrated interest in the possibility, but it is doubtful he has the backing of the Cult, and he has no further information of interest to me.

The Cult. There’s something.

The name is blotted out under a brown stain. The whole page is dotted with them.

The date at the top of the ledger is 1993- he was alive, but too young to remember. The blurry patchwork of his childhood is all shadows and monsters and the watchwords his mother drilled into his head - the Dark, the Stranger, the Eye. The faces of her associates are just smudges of color.

He flips pages until the spidery loops of his mother’s handwriting begin to be interspersed by entries in another hand, childish and precise at first. His mother had been insistent on teaching him all aspects of their hunt from the earliest age she could. 

There's little corresponding information in her digital record, aside from some old eBay records that went nowhere. Unsuccessful bids.

Sitting in the stuffy corner of his studio with the hum of the computer, staring at the loops of Mary’s spidery handwriting on the blotted paper is starting to make his eyes burn, so he closes the book and kills the computer.

 _A Leitner._ Could the Cult have gotten their hands on a Leitner?

That could be… anywhere from disastrous to a non-event.

Whatever their ritual had been, Gertrude had been adamant it failed. _It failed_ , she always said; not that she disrupted it.

So what did they think they could accomplish with a Leitner?

* * *

_The stars are the eyes of a great beast_ , was the first thing Natalia had said, standing in the center of the shop. She’d said it like a challenge, thrown it at Gerry as if he could fix it.

He had done his best, with the delicate lines of a sun on her arm and the calculations between the earth and the sun, the earth and the nearest star. But here she was back, shaking and pale.

“It’s not working anymore. The more I stare, the more I see it, the more I think- how could I have ignored it for so long? And when I think about the path, the impossibility of it all, it just reminds me of how big it must be, how- how-”

Vast, Gerry thinks.

“One shiver - one movement - and it could crush us all. And I know it will, and I can’t do anything about it,” she says. “But I can’t look away. Can’t sleep, can’t-“ She twists her hands together, and presses them to the counter, looking up to the ceiling as if to reassure herself of its continued existence. “I’m going to fail my course. Every time I think about the stars, I just- I can feel it, there, and one movement- one movement and everything would be over.”

“I’m sorry. I tried, I tried to remember, but I- I’m starting to seeing it in the daytime.” The lines of tattoos stand out against her pallid skin, crisp lines and dots of ink surrounded by half-moons of fingernail-sized bruises. “I was doing fine, I thought I could just- accept that it was there, not do so much actual stargazing, but- I see it in pictures of the stars, too. And now, whenever I step outside, it’s just… there. Not even watching, just there.”

Gerry nods. “Could you switch your thesis? Something more theoretical, maybe.” The Vast got plenty of mileage out of theoretic, too, of people’s mathematical conception of the universe, but it had served Natalia as a refuge thus far. 

“No. I can’t. There’s not the funding, I’m too far- if I stopped-“ Her eyes fill up with another kind of terror, the banal kind he knows all too well. 

He leans against the counter and digs his fingers into his palm, biting back the anger that wants to rear its head. This is life. This is real, this is what it’s like. The other life, the winding construct of familial expectations is a paper-thin, grasping thing that holds you in place while the fears strangle you.

Or, in his case, comes hand in hand with the fears.

“Natalia,” Gerry says, in as gentle a tone as he can muster. “That kind of thinking will get you killed.”

“Can’t you do something that actually works?” The words raise to almost a shout.

He's gotten to the point where he can face that without flinching. He folds his arms, and waits for her breathing to steady a little before he speaks.

"There are other things I can try," he says. "But they carry more serious risks."

“I can’t drop out of my program,” she says. “It’s not- it’s not an option. I'll do whatever it takes.”

* * *

Tears slide from the corners of Natalia’s eyes as she watches Gerry sketch, but she nods along to his words. He rested his sketchbook on the counter between them, and started drawing out the lines of enclosure, of the all-encompassing weight and security as he explains to her what it would require from her.

She cries silently, shuddering sobs that shake her shoulders but not a sound, but she stays focused on Gerry, and he can see the words sinking in, can see her start to cling to them.

As her tears are beginning to slow, the bell on the door jingles.

Another client. Gerry turns, and is about to open his mouth when a harsh, static-y feeling buzzes through his head, like the whine of feedback from pointing a mic at a speaker, but the speaker is his head.

It’s not an unfamiliar feeling. His heart leaps into his throat, half grief and half fear, but it’s not her standing in the doorway, of course it’s not.

There’s a man standing in the doorway. He’s slight, with short, dark hair and brown skin, and a professorial air, from the dusty brown of his blazer to his gold-rimmed glasses.

But it’s his eyes, of course, that Gerry can’t look away from. Deep brown, with an intensity that stops him dead.

The man clears his throat and coughs. “Ah- sorry,” he says, glancing around the shop. “Are- are you Gerard Keay?”

* * *

“Jon Simms,” the new archivist introduces himself, as Gerry flops down into the chair across from him. Jon winces when it screeches across the floor.

He’d stood stock-still while Gerry finished up with his client, looking everywhere but at the tear-stained girl. 

“I’m sorry-“

Gerry raises a hand. “Occupational hazard,” he says. “Not so different from the Archives, I’ll bet. You’re the new Archivist?”

“Yes,” Jon says. “Sasha told you about me.”

”Vaguely,” Gerry says, waving a hand, and trying to focus.

There’s a mark on him, a thin thread of something dusty and faint that skitters from Gerry’s senses before he can properly take it in. 

“Ah,” Jon says, into the silence. “I have read… quite a bit about you.” He says the words carefully, diplomatically.

Focus. “Come to any conclusions?” Gerry says.

“A few,” Jon says. “But the last few weeks have called more than a few of my conclusions into question.”

“Hm. Well, name them, and I’ll tell you if you’re right,” Gerry says.

“Just like that?” 

“Just like that.” Gerry leans back in his chair, tipping it backwards to prop his feet up on the table. 

Jon seems to turn his words over for a moment, contemplative. He glances around the shop, taking in the shrines on the far wall, the paintings- like Sasha, his gaze lingers on the eye- and the pages of flash sheets and ephemera. Gerry’s collections, things he picked up and things brought to the shop as in thanks, in fear, to neutralize their deadly little songs.

“You’re part of this,” Jon says. “This- whatever this is. The Entities. With Jane Prentiss, and - Gertrude, I suppose.”

Gerry inclines. “Point,” he says. “Though I’m not familiar with Prentiss.”

“You know about the Leitners,” Jon says. “Maybe you know more than the Archives, even. You’ve been hunting them for a long time.”’ There’s an undercurrent of hunger in his voice for a moment, almost shaping itself into a question, snapping at Gerry’s mind, but not quite digging in. Like a wolf pup whose teeth haven’t quite grown in yet, gumming at your fingers.

Cute, for now, but practicing to be lethal.

“Point,” Gerry says. 

“You help people,” Jon says. 

_You help people._

That wasn’t the way Gertrude would have put it, if he had a spot in her dossier of assets. And Elias would undeniably be even less complimentary.

“All the statements- That woman in Italy-”

Italy. The word makes something ache in Gerry’s chest, the feeling that he’d done his best to forbid and lock away. For the most part, his world was confined to the four walls, to the greater part of London on his good days. But he was still freer now than he had been then, when he woke every day with the taste of ash and bloodsmell in his mouth and the fear that she was back.

“-the lighting tech with Ex Altiora-“ he continues, when Gerry doesn’t say anything.

  
Ex Altiora, he remembered, but only just. The smell of ozone, a book heavy in his hands. The rush of fear and exhilaration, locked behind a heavy curtain of dissociation. He had gone through the familiar motions, and snatched another victory from his mother. It had felt like a victory for only a handful of hours.

“I- yeah,” Gerry says. “Sometimes.”

“Why?” The word is blunt, but there’s something in the way Jon is looking at Gerry, a spark of- Gerry can’t put his finger on it. It’s not desperation, though that is there too; nor is it the back-against-the-wall last-resort hope that most of his clients turned on him. 

“That’s not a conclusion.”

“No,” Jon says. “But I would… like to know. I don’t know the stakes behind any of this. I don’t know why you would help us.”

Gerry considers that for a moment. “Because I can, now,” he says. “Used to be that I couldn’t, and watched a lot of people get cut up to please some unknowable eldritch shit. Now I can do something about it.”

“I… see.” Jon drums his fingers on the table. “Why do you think I’ll put Sasha in danger?”

Gerry looks at Jon, really _looks_ at him.

There are dark circles settling under his eyes, and worry lines around his eyes. There’s something desperately closed-off, as he sits there with his arms folded, his gaze focused on Gerry. 

“You really don’t know,” Gerry says.

“No,” Jon snaps. “I don’t know about any of this. I wish I did.”

“Gertrude really didn’t prepare you,” Gerry says at last. 

What had she been thinking? She had preparations, he’d seen pieces of them. The trail she was setting up for her successor. He’d thought she’d have them hand-picked, but barring that-

Well, it wasn’t like the old woman was immune from arrogance. Maybe it just caught up with her.

There was a time when he would have been beside her, when whatever happened, happened. 

All that would have gotten him was death, probably.

“What’s going on?” Jon asks.

And now getting the Archivist up to speed is his responsibility.

“Tell me about the situation at the Archives, first. Sasha said something was threatening you,” he says. “It’ll be easier to explain if I know where I should start.” 

The circumstances come out haltingly - a statement involving worms, a gory, horrifying anomaly demonstrably true but explained away initially - Jon’s assistant, Martin (here, Jon stumbles over his words, backtracks to clarify, caught somewhere between justifying Martin’s actions and reproaching them), the walking hive that had once been a woman called Jane Prentiss.

And Michael.

Michael, of course. 

That explained the hint of the Spiral that had clung to Sasha. 

* * *

“- so that’s what Jane is? Some.. some spontaneous manifestation of fear?” Jon says. “Like a Lietner?” His eyes go to the table between them, where Gerry’s drawn out a rough diagram on Jon’s notepad.

It all looks neat, easy to explain, laid out in his hand. 

_The Stranger. The Spiral. The Desolation._

“Not quite,” Gerry says. “She’s a person who became a host for one of those things.”

“Surely not willingly.”

“Probably not completely, no. There’s always some sort of choice, but it’s rarely a free one. ” Gerry says. “ These things are fear - they know all of humanities’ buttons, whatever knowing implies for something like that. And sometimes the ‘choice’ is just between a horrible death and becoming a conduit to hurt others.” Gerry shrugs, and sets down his pen.

Jon reaches over to the notepad, and touches the lines of ink on the page. His fingers come away smudged with it, and he looks at the smudges as if they can verify Gerry’s words. “This sounds absurd,” he says, faintly.

Gerry sighs, and sets down the pen, resting his chin in his hand. “You’re the one telling me stories of a worm woman and a man with knives for hands.”

“Not knives, exactly,” Jon says. “But you believe me?” There’s a hairsplinter of fear in the words. Gerry could widen it with just a little shove. 

“Of course,” Gerry says, squashing the unbidden, cruel little impulse. “And it is absurd. It’s just real, too.”

Jon is silent for a long moment, still looking at Gerry’s diagram.

“I need to… get back to the Archives,” Jon says. “Martin- Tim- they all need to know. God, I- I dragged them into this. I was the one who asked Tim and Sasha.”

“Hold on,” Gerry says, catching the notepad before Jon can pull it back. His fingertips brush Jon’s knuckles, and a flash of static travels up his arm.

Jon jumps a little, pulling his hands back. 

“Sorry,” Gerry says. “Eye thing, I think. We’ve both got our own kind of connections.” Jon is giving him the worn, empty-eyed look of someone who has reached the limit of information they can properly take in, so he presses on quickly. “You shouldn’t take this back to the Archives.”

“Why not?” There’s a plaintive note in Jon’s voice.

“You’re definitely being watched in the Archives,” Gerry said. “I don’t know exactly how Elias fits into everything, but Gertrude was wary of him.”

“Elias- he would be part of this,” Jon says, and gives a little shake of his head. “He did seem surprisingly unconcerned about… everything that’s happened.”

And just like that, the Archives are his problem again.

* * *

A week passes before he hears anything else from the Archives.

He’s still paying for the jaunt to the nightclub and the standoff with Jude, in the dizziness and nausea that lingered even within the protection of the shop’s threshold, and in the constant throb of pain behind his eyes that sharpened to cold steel piercing his skull if he strayed. 

On good days, it was hardly perceptible within the shop; the shadow of something he knew he would notice if he focused on, but blended into the background, along with the groan of the building shifting and the heat of a London summer warming the roof tiles.

On bad days, the hurt seems to swell, filling all the gaps and space in his body with raw, static pain that lingered at the corners of his awareness regardless of painkillers and rest, sapping away strength and concentration. It was never as bad as it could get if he stepped outside, but it wasn’t good, either.

But eventually there’s prescriptions to pick up and he’s almost out of food - if a grocery delivery service could find his address, he wouldn’t wish it on them - so he drags himself out to the shops and the chemist.

He’s got his head down, teeth gritted, bargaining with his body to stay together for just a little while longer as he fumbles for his keys, when his shoulder brushes something in the doorway.

Some _one_.

Jon. Jon is standing there, looking bemused and faintly - concerned? confused? “Gerard,” he says. “I was just er- checking if you were in. Your shop doesn’t have hours listed online.”

 _Gerard._ The name alone is enough to make Gerry’s head spin. “Jon,” he says. “Uh…. come in.” 

He fumbles with the lock for a moment, but it finally, mercifully swings open. 

The cool, dusty air of the shop fills his lungs, soothing away the blistering afternoon sun. He drops the groceries on the table - he would worry about getting them up to his living quarters later - and staggers to the table. 

“Are you- alright?” Jon’s voice echoes through the shop. He’s still standing at the door. Gerry can feel his feet shift on the hardwood, knows the way his lips twitch without lifting his head or opening his eyes.

Perks of being him. 

“Fine,” he says. “Just- give me a minute.”

Jon’s shoes click across the wood floor, the first step hesitant, the following quickening as he looks around the shop. His eyes sweep over the counter, the sides plastered with band stickers and the hand-lettered jewelry sign; the small case of piercings. 

Gerry feels Jon’s attention slide from one display to the next, over the cracked MP3 player and pride flag, over the painted eyes and the stubborn plants, like the prickle of someone looking at him from across the room.

He pulls his attention away, shuts it out, and focuses on just breathing, until he’s reasonably certain he’s not going to be sick or pass out, and can pack away the rest of the symptoms as something to be dealt with later. 

When he looks up, Jon is examining the cluttered collection of shrines on the far wall. He leans to examine one.

“Glen Miller.” The murmur reaches Gerry’s ears.

Gerry laughs, and Jon glances up. 

“Gerard,” he says, cautiously, and something in the way he says the name makes something flutter and spasm in Gerry’s chest. Strange to hear his name out loud, and stranger not to flinch. “Why is there a picture of Glen Miller on your wall?”

“You a jazz fan?” Gerry says. 

“Well- tangentially, I suppose,” Jon says. “But no, mostly I was- I had an interest in disappearances, when I was a child. Unexplained disappearances. He disappeared over the Channel, if I recall.” He glances over the other faces. 

“The Vast,” Gerry says.

“What?”

“That was what got him. The Vast,” Gerry says. “No wild benders in Paris or secret spy missions. Sadly.”

“How do you know? You can’t have been around-”

Gerry laughs. “No! Though people in our circles tend to stick around longer than most, if they survive at all. Mum’s friends always did like to boast.”

“Ah.” Jon considers that. 

The next words that came out of his mouth would be about Gerry’s mother, about the crime scene photos and mugshots. 

“You know, you could make a statement about that,” Jon says. “It would make some graduate student’s week.”

Gerry snorts. “Sure. My life’s goal, obviously.”

“Who are the others?”

“They’re the dead and the... missing,” Gerry says. “The ones I know about.” Former clients, people from his mother’s book, stories passed down to him through the grapevine, fragments of lives. “Most people will never know what happened to them. I didn’t want it to be forgotten.”

“Ah,” Jon says, after a moment. “A record.”

“Kinda, yeah,” Gerry says. “It looked like you had a reason for coming here, though.”

“Oh- yes. I’ve found something. But if you’re not… “ Jon trails off. 

“I’m good to talk,” Gerry says. “What have you got?”

“I’ve found Jane Prentiss’s statement.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can find me on tumblr @corvidfeathers if you'd like to yell about tma with me!


	3. better find another superstition

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> whew this chapter took a while! I had to split the events I was going to cover this chapter into two, and rearrange some things, so because of that there will be six chapters to this fic instead of five! My goal is to finish it before TMA's final episode, so I've got a lot work to do haha
> 
> thank you so much for the kudos and comments!! I appreciate them so much and they make me so excited to write this!
> 
> thanks again to my dear @agarthanguide who not only did some fantastic art of Gerry and the shop (check out the second chapter for a link!) but also helped me brainstorm a lot of this chapter and always has the best entity-related musings <3
> 
> Content warnings for this chapter specifically: brief thoughts regarding contagion/infestation (related to the Corruption), allusions to abuse, discussion/imagery of apartment fires (similar in content to season five's Fire Escape but briefer but theoretical), Cult of the Lightless Flame-typical body horror

“Arthur Nolan,” Gerry muses, flicking through Jon’s supplementary research. “Now there’s a familiar name.”

“Really?” Jon says. “Who was he?”

“Leader of the Cult of the Lightless Flame, for a while. You should do some digging in the Archives, I’m sure he’ll be in there somewhere,” Gerry says, flipping back to Prentiss’s statement. The owl at the top of the Institute’s official letterhead stares back him with its ghoulish, empty eyes. Whatever graphic designer Elias or his predecessor had hired for that one had really outdone themselves.

He can’t imagine how that played out. Over polite emails? ‘ _Sorry, this doesn't quite fit our image. It needs to be more malevolent._ ’

“The Cult of the-” Jon says, reaching for his notepad and jotting the name down. “That would be… the Dark?”

“The Desolation,” Gerry says. “Big fans of arson. They tangled with Gertrude back in the seventies, apparently. She had a low opinion of Nolan. I sort of knew he’d been ousted, but not this far.” 

That couldn’t be a coincidence, the Corruption growing on his property. Natural overlap of the Powers?

Not likely. He thinks of his mother's notes, about the Corruption and the Desolation, and the Cult's interest in Lietners.

“Ah.” Jon chews on the edges of his pen for a moment, looking pensive. The mug of tea he’d accepted sits beside his notepad, untouched. “Well, at least he’s dead."

“Wouldn’t be so sure,” Gerry says, checking Jon’s notes again. “Members of the Cult don’t usually die in accidental fires.” Especially not ones as old as him. “But that’s secondary,” he says, at Jon’s expression. “Whatever happened, it’s Prentiss who’s the problem, now.” Though Nolan might know something about her, come to think of it.

“Right,” Jon says.

“How’s that going?” Gerry’s pretty sure he knows the answer before Jon opens his mouth; the deepening of the dark circles under his eyes paints a vivid enough picture.

Jon runs a hand through his hair. “Poorly,” he says. “Elias has been cooperative about the fire extinguishers and security but he doesn’t seem as concerned as he should be. And the worms keep getting in, we’ve found them everywhere. We spray them, we crush them, but they just keep coming.” He swallows. “I feel as if she’s… toying with us, and I can’t help but think of how easy it would be for her to- One slip-up, one mistake-” He shakes his head.

The slow fear of infestation. Scrub, and scrub, but eventually the infection will reach your skin. Gerry shudders. 

“Gerard, the people who come to you- what kind of protection can you give them?” Jon says. He’s standing at the counter, looking at some of the flash sheets spread out over the cafe table. “Sasha said you offered it to her. Would it- How does it work?” He touches the edge of a design, a linework hurricane lantern spilling warm yellow light outwards.

“The people who make it here have usually been marked by an entity in some way, and have either encountered it and fought their way free or are being hunted,” Gerry says. “I try to give them something to hold onto, to start with.”

Jon’s eyes wander around the shop, going over the pages of flash tattoos Gerry’s got pinned on the wall. “So how does any of that stuff help? Does it- banish them?”

Gerry grimaces. “No.” he says. “Honestly, a lot of my tattoos are mundane. It’s not like there are forces of good or love or whatever to invoke, and bringing in other entities is tricky. Most of these are about perception.” He traces the curve of a rope, knotted tightly around an anvil. “They’re reminders. I try to work with people to figure out the best reminder for them, but these are generic, for people who don’t have the time for a more complicated design.”

“So- so you give people symbols, things to believe in- and if they believe that that can help them-“

“It’s not like Tinker Bell. Believing in it doesn’t make it work better,” Gerry says.

“But you just said it relies on perception,” Jon says. 

“It’s… Huh. Alright,” Gerry says. “It isn’t not about belief, but belief is double-edged, because there’s always something waiting to turn it against you. Say- the Lonely. If something can reinforce a strong connection with another person, or people, that’s anathema to the Lonely, but it’d be like candy to the Desolation. A reminder of everything that person could lose, right there in front of them. So it’s situational, and it’s not really protection. It’s more of a… a…”

“A lifeline?” Jon supplies.

“Sort of. Hopefully.” Gerry shakes his head. “I can’t guarantee safety- all I can do is try to give people the tools to find their way out.”

“But with Prentiss, a trick like that won’t help you much. If she was trying to pull you into the Corruption, maybe, but it doesn’t seem like her angle.” As far as Jon says, at least. “Mostly, she’s threatening you physically.”

Jon’s eyes narrow. “You said invoking the Entities is tricky,” he says, slowly. “When you were drawing out designs for that woman, last week… you were talking about- the Buried, right?” His eyes go to Gerry’s tattoos. “And your tattoos- they aren’t a just reminder.”

Gerry looks down at his knuckles. “They were,” he says. “To begin with. But you’re right. It’s possible to invoke the entities for… measures of protection. But you never know just how it’s going to turn out. The best you can hope is to brute-force foil something worse.”

“Anything I did- it would probably have to involve tying you more deeply to the Eye. That’s something that I know Gertrude tried to avoid, so I don’t know what impact it would have on your… Archive… things.” He waves a hand.

Jon sighs. “Maybe it would make it easier if I did,” he says. “I mean, if anything it’s not knowing enough that has us in this situation. If I were tied more closely to the Eye- would I be able to deal with Prentiss?”

There’s a new gleam in his eyes, half hunger and half determination. 

“I don’t know,” Gerry says. “Could be. Could be it would just fry your brain.”

“Right.”

“Gertrude played that kind of thing close to the chest, and we didn’t exactly talk shop. She never let me tattoo her, either.” Though he’d offered one or twice. Mostly as a joke. “I’d prefer to figure out how it might affect you before jumping into that one, but it’s your choice.” He taps the sheet. “Your coworkers, though- I could probably work something for them, if they wanted.”

Jon considers that. “I’ll let them know,” he murmurs, absently.

* * *

  
Dark is beginning to gather outside when Jon’s phone buzzes. He glances at it. “Oh,” he says, and glances over to the shop window and the darkening street outside. “I didn’t realize it was quite so late.” He drags a hand over his face, and sighs into the papers. “I need to get back to the Archives. I told Martin I’d- swing by before I went home.” 

Gerry considers that for a moment, weighing the dulled pain lingering behind his eyes, ready to flare up again at the opportunity, with the dull fear in Jon’s voice. 

It was a fear he’d lived with. The constant need for vigilance, for the thing lurking around the corner, waiting for a moment of weakness. It needed only to touch you to claim you for its own, burrow into your chest. 

“I’ll walk you to the station, if you like,” he says. 

Jon looks up, as if he’s entirely forgotten about Gerry. “Oh. Ah. Yes. That would be- thank you.” Jon starts to gather his papers.

Gerry is lacing his boots when Jon speaks up again.

“Gerard…” 

“Hm?”

Jon is standing over the cafe table, frozen, staring at half-gathered stack of files. “What am I supposed to be _doing_? You said… you said Gertrude was trying to save the world.”

Gerry opens his mouth, but no words come to him. What is Jon supposed to do? Step in to where Gertrude left off? 

Luckily, Jon isn’t looking at him.

“Hey,” Gerry says, pushing himself to his feet and coming to stand beside Jon. The impulse to reach out is so intense that for a moment it is a physical sensation sparking along with fingertips. He starts to gather the rest of the files instead. “Survival, first. We’ll deal with Prentiss. Then you can start sorting out what it means for you to be the Archivist.” He holds the files out to Jon.

“Right.” Jon takes a breath. “Alright.”

* * *

“Mind if I smoke?”

Gerry can see some sort of mental calculus happening behind Jon’s eyes before he gives a shake of his head. “Go ahead,” he says.

Gerry pulls the pack of cigarettes from his jacket and lights one as they walk. 

The heat of the day is dissipating from the sidewalks and street, and there’s a bit of bite to the breeze. 

A long drag on the cigarette, and the nicotine settles over him. It doesn’t quite dull the pain, but it’s relief of a different kind, like scratching skin to confuse the pain receptors. It seems sharper, more real the further he steps from the shop, as his awareness of the premises thins to thread and the whole of himself is once more within his bones.

“You should come to the Archives,” Jon is saying. “You’d be welcome to go through the records. And well, everyone is quite curious about you.”

Gerry turns his face from Jon and exhales smoke. “Can’t,” he says.

“You can’t?” Jon says. “Like I can’t… quit?” There’s a forced casual note to the phrase, barely-bridled fear beneath. Definitely something Jon hadn’t dealt with yet.

The thought makes Gerry’s head throb to the note of floorboards creaking and pipes singing. The restless, pointless fury, the fox-in-trap fear that said gnaw, gnaw, gnaw, anything is better than this, anything is better than being trapped in with-

Well, Jon would have to face it eventually. Gerry didn’t envy him that.

“Kinda,” he says. “I can only spend so much time away from the shop.”

That creates an interesting contortion of expressions across Jon’s face “Oh,” Jon says. “I see.” A pause. “Will I become… tied to-”

“The Institute?” Gerry says, and laughs. “Nah. You don’t have to worry about that. Globetrotting was always Gertrude’s thing.” He takes another drag of the cigarette. “I could get to the Institute, on a decent day, but I try to avoid it. It’s a pain, and I don’t want to draw undue attention.” The Archivist stepping into his shop created a strange sort of feedback; he doesn’t particularly care to push his luck the other way, if the outcomes could only be drawing Elias’s attention and/or something disrupting or even breaking his connection with the shop.

He didn’t quite miss the cramped basement office, the yellowed walls and dusty files. But there had been something familiar about Gertrude’s office. He’d spent more than one night propped against her desk, sorting files to the crackly sound of her old radio.

She had rued the day he figured out how to hook in his MP3 player to her speakers.

It hadn’t been safe. It hadn’t really been home. But it had been something. A purpose.

But she’d discarded him like she discarded everyone. There wasn’t any use brooding about it; if anything he was lucky he had escaped worse.

Jon’s fingers twitch on the strap of his bag, and he takes steadying breaths as he walks. Gerry lets the silence settle between them, and pretends he doesn’t notice the quiet panic attack playing out over Jon’s face. 

The breeze picks up, fluttering the flyers plastered over vacant shop windows. Bands and missing pets, plays and concerts. 

The tattered old club winds through his mind, primed for burning. There was someone who probably wouldn’t make it to his shop without some sort of intervention.

Then, Gerry is being watched. 

The sensation is so sudden he draws up short, looking behind him. 

There’s a man walking up the street. His eyes meet Gerry’s for a moment, then skim him as if he’s a part of the street itself. 

The metallic-cold paper-ink smell of the Beholding is all around him. An icepick of pain shoots through his left eye, so sharp he drops the cigarette.

And then it’s gone, leaving only the fading traces in the air and dull aftershocks radiating out from behind his eyes.

Jon’s stopped, and is looking around himself with quick, practiced gestures, scanning the ground first before looking to Gerry. “What’s wrong?” he asks.

Gerry swallows. “I… thought I got a scent,” he says. “Not the Corruption. The Eye.” He presses his thumb to the spot above his left eye, trying to coax away the lingering ache. “It’s gone now.” Not the Corruption, meaning probably not a threat to Jon in this moment, and they should keep moving. He gives a shake of his head, and files it away under things that could be worried about later. “Nothing to worry about now.”

“Alright,” Jon says, picking up his pace to keep up with Gerry. “You said- a scent?”

Gerry laughs. “Yeah. It’s not exactly that, but I can sort of… pick up the trails of Entities, sometimes. Smell when they’ve marked someone, or are exerting influence over a space. I’ve been that way since I was a kid.” Since he first started inking eyes over his skin with his mother’s permanent markers, a desperate bid to ward off the things that went bump in the night. “Comes in handy.” 

“I can imagine,” Jon says. 

“Gertrude called me a bloodhound, once. Think that was half the reason she kept me around.” 

* * *

Gerry leans against the column in the Tube station, listening to the rumble of the approaching train and trying to prod carefully at the thread of awareness that had touched him earlier. He had his guesses, but if he could catch its scent...

“Can I have your number?” Jon’s words snap him from his reverie. 

Gerry blinks, and stares at him. It takes him a moment to piece them together into meaning, and by then Jon is already filling the dead air between them.

“If you… use phones,” he says. 

“Jane Prentiss can use a phone,” Gerry says, his lips curling into a smile. “Why couldn’t I?”

“I… suppose you’re right,” Jon says. “I wasn’t sure quite what level of strange you’re operating under.” He frowns. “And I was trying to give you plausible deniability, if you didn’t want to give it to me.” 

Gerry laughs. “Fair.”

“I just think it would be more efficient if we could call or text instead of me showing up at your doorstep.”

It would be more efficient. Gerry considers for a moment. There were a handful of people who had his number, people who could vaguely be called allies, but nobody who would call on him. It wasn’t connected to the shop for a reason. The nature of his- existence was that he couldn’t help much more often than he could, and if he ran himself ragged outside the shop, he wouldn’t be left with enough energy to survive, much less protect his clients.

Gerry reaches into his pocket, and produces his phone, a battered black rectangle with a cracked screen. “Sure,” he says, unlocking it and handing it over to Jon. “Just remember, I’m not the best person to call in an emergency. I can’t always pick up.”

“I’ll remember,” Jon says, taking it, and just looks at it for a moment, before beginning to type in his number.

The nagging feelings of being watched is still lingering. The Eye knew him down to his bones and the worn floorboards of the shop, but this wasn’t just the Eye.

Jon hands him back his phone, and there’s a new contact added to the short list.   
Jonathan Sims.

* * *

By Friday, the buzzing in Gerry’s head has subsided to the occasional stab, and stepping outside doesn’t make the entire street spin, so after dealing with the day’s appointments he takes the Tube into central London. 

The band that caught Jude’s interest is playing is another venue, a small show in a slick club at the edge of London proper. Less of a fire hazard than the last venue, but Gerry shows up early anyway.

Gerry finds the singer out back, on the stagedoor steps. She’s alone this time, leaning against the railing. There’s a lit cigarette in her hands, but she’s not raising it to her lips. 

The dim glow of the cherry flickers across her face, catching on the lines under her eyes.

Gerry stops in front of the railing. “Hey.”

She starts, almost dropping the cigarette, but her expression harden when she sees him. “This isn’t a meet and greet,” she says. “You’ll have to wait until after the show, like everyone else.” There’s a note of caution in her voice.

Gerry doesn’t make a move towards the steps. “Not a fan,” he says. 

“What are you then, a creep? Get lost.”

“I know the woman who’s been following you to your shows,” he says, and the suspicion in her eyes increases. “Jude Perry.”

She finally takes a drag of the cigarette. “Good for you.”

“She wants to hurt you,” Gerry says.

“What?” The singer laughs. “Listen, if you’ve got a problem with-“

“Does she push you to be cruel?” Gerry asks.

The singer’s eyes narrow. “That’s none of your fucking business.”

“She’s part of a cult,” Gerry says. “She looks for people with power over others. She’ll have been telling you things about fire. About burning. Secrets that no one else could ever know- validating impulses you’ve never admitted to yourself. It starts small, things that feel harmless, but it’ll escalate.”

The choking smell of smoke fills Gerry’s lungs as she leans over the railing and looks at him. There’s a flat, dull sheen to her eyes, but there’s also fear there.

“Fuck off,” she says, and flicks the cigarette away. She keeps an eye on Gerry until the door of the club shuts behind her.

Gerry waits a moment, and then smothers the cigarette smoldering in the alleyway. 

* * *

Finding a dead man turns out to be easier than Gerry expects.

A few calls and called-in favors, and Gerry has the address for an mid-century tenement building in Barking that changed hands a few years before. The name on the deed isn’t Arthur Nolan, but the man on the other side of the phone is reasonably sure its the Cult of the Lightless Flame who own the building. 

Gerry hangs up, and looks from the address to the map of London, where the Desolation’s activities stare back at him in mid-tone orange. His reports are spotty at best, but there is a concentration of incidents in East London. 

He flips back through his contacts, and looks at Jon’s number for a long moment before pressing call.

“Hold on,” Jon says, after Gerry relayed the information. “You’re going to talk to him about Prentiss?”

“Her and other things, yeah.”

“I want to come along.”

* * *

“Leave the talking to me,” Gerry says, after flagging down Jon. “I’m used to dealing with the Cult.”

They must look an odd pair; Gerry, in his ripped skinny jeans and leather coat, and Jon in his dust-brown blazer and tastefully fashionable button-up. 

“Right,” Jon says. “I have no objections to that.” He frowns. “What are these… avatars like? Is there anything I should know?”

“Don’t touch him, try not to let him touch you,” Gerry says. “That’s how they burn you.”

* * *

The apartment building is a flat, featureless block of units stacked one atop the other, with a zig-zagged scaffolding of balconies and fire escapes climbing up the side. The breeze carries the smell of ozone and soot to Gerry’s senses, the crackling, devouring potential of the Desolation.

Stepping over the threshold makes Gerry’s skin prickle. 

The carpet underneath his feet is taupe-gray and stained with a patina of grime from the street outside. The faint murmur of voices fills the hallway, laughter, snatches of music, a baby crying, dozens of feet on dozens of floors. People coming, going, living, unaware of the devouring hunger at the heart of their home.

Gerry stops in front of the apartment specified, and bangs his fists against the door three times.

Jon glances around, frown lines appearing between his brows. “There’s something about this place,” he says. “It feels-” 

The door swings open, letting a cloud of stale cigarette smoke and charred things and heat waft into the hallway. A face peers through the cloud, heavily-lined, with waxy, pallid skin and a gnarled brow.

The way he moves, a little too limber in some ways, unexpectedly stiff in others, is all too familiar. He can still feel Jude’s fingers sizzling into the skin of his chest.

“What d’ya want?” the man growls.

“Arthur Nolan,” Gerry says. 

Nolan’s cheeks twitch, like he’s thinking of spitting at Gerry’s feet, but it’s a slow curl of smoke that emerges from his mouth. “Piss off,” he growls, and goes to close the door.

Gerry gets his foot in it. “I have some questions for you.”

Nolan’s expression doesn’t shift. “And why should I care?” He stares at Gerry, his eyes narrowing. “Do I know you from somewhere?”

“We’re from the Magnus Institute,” Jon cuts in. “I’m the Archivist, and this is- is-”

“Gerard Keay,” Gerry says. “Gertrude told me all about you.”

At Gertrude’s name, Nolan’s manner shifts.

“Keay,” Nolan says, drawing out the name. “Thought I recognized you. Spitting image of your mum, aren’t you?” He chuckles. “I heard Gertrude picked you up. She liked to take in strays, didn’t she?”

“We have some questions for you,” Gerry says.

“Course you do. Suppose you might as well come in,” Nolan says, leaving the door hanging open behind him. “Seeing as I won’t be getting rid of you.”

Gerry steps into the sweltering room first, and is immediately overwhelmed by the smell of stale tobacco. It hangs in the air, and drips from the walls and the cracked expanse of the low ceiling. Beneath it hangs the persistent underlayer of ozone, of cheap corner store phone chargers and faulty wiring, of rotting newspaper and a thousand little potential accidents primed and cultivated by poverty.

In the corner, a television plays the nightly news, the low voices of the announcers just loud enough for the persistent pitch of their voices to deep through the walls, not loud enough to piece together any of the words.

Nolan lowers himself into the old armchair in front of the television with a heavy grunt, and stares up at Gerry and Jon. There’s something strange in the lines of his face- the skin is just a little too stiff, hangs a little too heavy, as if the wrinkles are carved and still instead of living flesh. There’s a strange paleness to his flesh, beneath the pallid color of his skin- like the mottled, flaky texture of old candles.

“So,” he growls, looking Jon up and down. “You’re her replacement, then.” His gaze swings to Gerry. “And you’re Mary’s brat.” His laughter is like the rasp of metal on stone. “A whole new generation.” He snorts. “I suppose you have some questions.” His eyes again go to Jon.

“Jane Prentiss,” Jon says, before Gerry can open his mouth.

Nolan gives him an uncomprehending stare.

“She was your tenant,” Jon says. What do you know about her?”

“Tenants,” Nolan rasps, and waves his hand. “Tenants come and go, these days. Can’t be expected to keep track of them.”

“There was a hive in your property,” Gerry says. “The Corruption. It called to her.”

“Ah. Right. The Crawling Rot,” Arthur says. “A nasty piece of work, that was. Good thing we found it when we did. They fester, if left unchecked. I burned it out just in time, though it could have been a neater job.” He sighs. “Pity about the girl, ending like that.”

“She didn’t end,” Jon says, his voice tight.

Nolan grimaces. “Well, did and didn’t, that’s how it always goes, isn’t it? A bit of unfinished business, I’ll admit. Would have been neater if I could have burned her, too.” 

“What is the Hive?” Jon asks. “Is there a way to get rid of it, permanently?”

“I don’t familiarize myself with that kind of filth,” Nolan says with a sniff. “All I know’s how to deal with it, and that’s burning. It’d take a fair bit of fire, I imagine, but a big enough blaze and she’ll go up just like that.” His grin widens, stretching beyond the corners of his mouth.

Jon’s jaw snaps shut, and he takes a step back, knocking against the edge of Nolan’s television.

“The _Archivist_ , huh,” Nolan murmurs, shifting in his chair. “You know, you’re not quite so persuasive as the last one.” He leans forward, his pale, waxy fingers extending towards Jon’s arm.

Gerry yanks Jon backwards, and puts himself between him and Nolan’s hands. 

For a moment, the only sound in the room is Jon’s rapid breathing and the hum of the telly. Nolan is still as a statue; only his eyes show life.

Gerry lets go of Jon’s shoulder, but keeps himself between them.

“If that’s all,” Nolan says. “I’d prefer you be on your way.”

“It’s not,” Gerry says. “I have another question.”

“Don’t push your luck,” Nolan growls, another whisper of smoke escaping his mouth. It’s cracked at the corner, Gerry realizes; not like a wound in the skin, but a fissure in the wax, deep enough to see the glimmer of what lay underneath.

He’s starting to come apart. Gerry smiles. “Don’t be stupid, Arthur,” he says. It’s Gertrude’s words crawling from his mouth. She had a thousand ways of twisting words, applying pressure, all to avoid tearing the answer straight from someone’s throat. “You know what Gertrude told me. Or hasn’t Jude told you?”

Nolan’s expression twists, more fissures opening up in the skin. Behind him, Jon makes a low exclamation, half disgust, half surprise.

“Gertrude got what was coming to her,” Nolan snarls.

“Maybe,” Gerry says, taking a step closer. There’s heat rolling off of Nolan, but it’s faint, flickering, nothing like the bonfire of Jude’s presence. “And maybe you’ll get what’s coming to you.”

Nolan leans forward, his hands tightening on the arms of the chair, and for a moment Gerry’s thoughts are on how he’s going to get Jon out the door, how to put as many doors between them and Nolan as fast as he can. But he holds his ground.

Nolan glances behind him, to Jon. Whatever he sees there turns the moment. 

He relaxes with a sneer. “Go on then. Ask your question.”

“I’ve heard the cult’s interested in Lietners,” Gerry says, straightening. “Know anything about that?”

“Diego,” Nolan growls.

The name sparks a memory. “Diego Molina,” Gerry says. “He took the Cult from you.”

“He spent too much time hanging around your mum,” Nolan spits. “Got all kinds of ideas about Lietners.” He laughs. “I half hoped she’d take a fancy to him, put him in that book of hers.”

Gerry pushes away the instinctive rush of narrow-visioned nausea, for a moment embracing the boy who had learned to keep his voice and hands steady as his mum took someone apart. She never could abide weakness. Grant us the sight. “I don’t think she ever put someone like you in her book,” he says. “Don’t think it would have worked on your lot. It requires skin.”

“Oh, not one one like me,” Nolan says. “But Diego? Diego couldn’t abide tallow and wax. He had loftier ideas. Always looking for scripture, for texts, for some ancient drivel and occultist nonsense. The truest direction came from within, I always said, from the fire, the longing imbued in us by our god.” He taps his chest. “It might not have always led us on a straight path, but it was better than trying to worship some demon out of one of his books.” 

_Interesting._

“Thanks for the tips,” Gerry says. “We’ll be on our way, then.” He spins and nods to Jon, then follows him towards the door.

“You know, after all the years in service, I know it when I see it,” Nolan says, as he reaches the door.

Gerry pauses.

“You’re going to burn, Keay. One of these days.”

His laughter follows Gerry down the stairs and out into the street.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for no particular reason, whether Arthur Nolan being implied to be alive in Fire Escape is an instance of 'the author forgetting that character was killed off' or an indication that whatever the hell that drama he did to destroy the corruption nest didn't kill him is a question that haunts me. i just would love to know!

**Author's Note:**

> i didn't think 'people being inextricable bound to buildings' would be a motif in my writing but funnily enough this is not the first fic I've written containing that premise. it's from canon in the other fic though, so 
> 
> Thank you for reading! Let me know what you think <3


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